Expand Your Jargon I: Analeptic Prolepsis

As I've been getting ready for going on the job market in the fall, I have realized that my snootiness has something to be desired. Back in college, I had a pretty firm grip on impressive vocabulary words. "Axiology presupposes metaphysics" was a mantra with me. But in grad school, there's more competition over who has mastery of the trendiest words. Even when I learn a word, I discover a month or so later that I've completely forgotten it. So, I've decided every so often in my blog to feature a literary or technical term for emulation. Disclaimer: I am an amateur when it comes to snooty literary terms, so I will try to explain the term's usage as I best understand it, and am most amused by it.

Out term for today is "analeptic prolepsis." What is especially cool about this term, besides being long, is it seems like it should be a contradiction. According to Gerard Genette's Narrative Discourse, prolepsis is "any narrative maneuver that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place later," and analepsis is "any evocation after the fact of an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where we are at any given moment." To simplify, analepsis is a flashback (going back to an earlier event), and prolepsis is like foreshadowing--it anticipates or gives advance notice of an event (e.g. Terminator's "I'll be back," Jesus's "I'll rebuild the temple in three days," etc.).

So what is an analeptic prolepsis? You could see it as "the future within the past." Another way to understand it as a flashback to an earliermoment of foreshadowing. For instance, at the end of Sixth Sense, when Bruce Willis is first realizing he's a ghost, he has a flashback in which he remembers the kid telling him, "sometimes ghosts don't even know they're dead ..." only we now see that it was proleptic, because it foreshadowed that Willis was the ghost who was dead. Think how much fun it would be to prognosticate early on in the movie, "I bet this is going to turn into an analeptic prolepsis later": in fact, such a prognostication would almost be a "proleptic analeptic prolepsis" (foreshadowing a flashback about foreshadowing), and just how cool is that? (Answer: very cool.) It's probably also a fun term to bring to a Bible study, where New Testament authors are constantly flashing back to Old Testament passages: "This passage really touched me--I was moved by the epistle's use of the analeptic prolepsis with the book of Psalms." Sure, other snooty Bible people can throw around terms like "JEDP" and "hermeneutics," but I prognosticate that analeptic prolepsis will blow them all out of the water. Upon that, you have my proleptic analeptic prolepsis.

Internet in Heaven?

When Samuel Johnson (noted 18th century Anglican, writer of the first English dictionary, etc.) lost his wife, he took great comfort in the idea that the dead may be able to watch over the affairs of the living. In The Lion King, Simba got to see his dead father Mufasa watching over him from the clouds. It is only natural that we wish to have some kind of contact with friends or family who have departed this earth. This is a touching sentiment, and I respect it.

However, I would like to point out that bloggers have even more reason to hope that this kind of contact is possible. It means the possibility of more readers! Suppose you have a blog in which no one comments. "No big deal," you say to yourself. "My blog entries offer such a definitive word that there is nothing to say." Curious if people are checking your blog but not leaving comments, you decide to set up a hit counter and discover you aren't even getting hits! Now as far as I know, there is no way that someone can visit a website without setting off a hit counter, once it's been set up. Unless the person is using an ip address from heaven! I sincerely doubt that even the most advanced tracking cookie technology has a prayer (no pun intended) of registering such hits. Perhaps there's even a heaven comment box that only people from heaven can see!

Internet in heaven would also be advantageous for the earthly blogger because there's not a need for advertising or marketing. Here on earth, there's all this pressure about "With whom will I network?" and "What niche do I fill?" and "how do I inform people of my existence?" I don't think you have to worry about that sort of stuff for heavenly readers. Presumably, a blogger doesn't have to network with bloggers who are popular in the heavenly blogosphere. (Side note: what if heaven's not a sphere at all? What will it be called?) Probably one of the benefits of the heavenly denizen is that the person gets to talk God and He talks back audibly. Plus, He is omniscient. So in an ideal world, someone in heaven asks God, "Are there any blogs out there I'd like?" and God points them right to you.

I don't want to be presumptuous about what takes place in heaven; if Jesus had not said otherwise, I would have presumed there was still marriage there. Perhaps it is foolish to think that there is still an internet connection there, as well. But as I wrap up this month's pledge drive and the crass quantification of readers and comments, it seems fitting to depart from earth's petty materialism to ponder heaven ... from an earthly, petty, materialistic standpoint. It's probably impossible while here not to describe heaven in earthly terms: its streets are paved with gold, after all (take that, money is the root of all kinds of evil!), and we store up "treasures" in heaven. We use earthly language and material terms to describe the ineffably sublime. So even if we don't have internet readers from heaven, it's appropriate to think that we are blogging, not for the good of this world, but for the next. There are kindred spirits out there with whom we will spend eternity, and there's no harm in thinking that one day, we can exchange heavenly blog feeds with them.

Too Much Dairy

Recently, my wife and I received an ice-cream maker. It's been fun to experiment with various flavors, such as cinnamon ice cream or blueberry-bananna ice cream. However, the drawback is that, when I look at the list of ingredients for a recipe, I often don't understand what they want me to get. Much of this lack of understanding comes to my lack of awareness concerning the great variety of dairy products out there. I can't keep them all straight. And what is even worse is that they do not go by the same names in the recipes that they do in the grocery stores. For instance, my wife sent me out to find "regular" milk. I searched the highways and byways for some dairy product that went by the name "regular milk," but it wasn't there. Apparently, it's called "whole" milk, because all other milks are woefully inadequate and incomplete, what with lacking all that fat. Perhaps it's like the old days, back when we had "skim milk," before this "fat free" nonsense. It's kind of like switching to a new system of measurement or fragmenting the Soviet Union or something: "Come on, everybody, throw out your old odometers, we're going metric!" "Come on, everybody, Communism has been destroyed, throw out your old maps!" "Come on, everybody, throw out your old recipe books, now we're using fat-free milk!" While buying new globes because we have gotten rid of Communist dictatorships is okay in my book, having to do away with the old recipe books because we've bought into newfangled products like fat free milk is unconscionable.

People have not only ruined milk's good name; they have made cream confusing. My wife sent me to the grocery store in search of something called "heavy cream." In my naivete, I thought there was a substance out there that would say "heavy cream," and everything else would have titles that didn't say "heavy cream." But I was surrounded by different forms of milk, be it evaporated milk (how can this be?), half and half, creamer (it says cream in the title, is that it?), "heavy whipping cream," and "heavy whipped cream." How in the world could I figure out what I was supposed to get?

To put this in perspective: imagine that you are a monotheist who has just been sent by your wife to the local polytheist temple for altar-shopping. MONO: "Uh--can--can I have an altar to God?" CLERK: "Which god, sonny?" MONO: "Uh, I--uh, my wife said there was only supposed to be one. Uh, 'The God,' maybe?" CLERK: "Oh. Do you mean Zeus?" MONO: "Um, I thought--I thought his name was just God. I don't know. I left my cell phone back home. Maybe she meant this Zeus product of which you speak." And then the happy go lucky monotheist returns home with what he thinks is the perfect altar gift, when he gets home, his wife she starts screaming, WIFEO: "NO, you complete idiot! You went out and bought a false god! Do you want the only true God to smite us?" MONO: "But honey, the signs were all confusing, and I think they were out of God--" WIFEO: "You didn't look close enough! Do I have to do all the worshipping for you?"

Now, my wife didn't behave that way. My point is that shopping for someone else can be a very exhausting experience, especially when no item exactly matches what you wrote down, and your inductive skills when applied to groceries are not stellar. Frankly, I can't even understand how these products exist: I understand that, even if cream is fairly liquidy, it can be "whipped," but how in the world can it get a present participle like "whipping?" How does milk evaporate and still end up all liquidy? I may consume dairy, but I can never comprehend it.

Repetitively Redundant in a Reiterative Manner

I've read some short selections from C. S. Lewis's God in the Dock before, and I've always been rather impressed by what I've read. This time, I determined I would plow through the whole text, and all the kernels of brilliance would finally be mine, all mine! Unfortunately, I've got to admit that the book gets disappointing in larger doses. When I first started reading, I was rather impressed by Lewis's power to craft memorable illustrations. For instance, C. S. Lewis argues that pre-Modern man was not superstitious and unaware of "the laws of nature": to prove this, Lewis points out that Joseph, Jesus's father, was familiar with the standard scientific m.o. for baby production and wanted to divorce Mary quietly. This is a rather memorable illustration. It is so memorable that in every instance in which C. S. Lewis wishes to make this same point, he uses the same illustration.

It's bad enough when Lewis repeats an illustration that I initially had some fondness for. It's harder when he's repeating himself about something that didn't mean much to me to begin with. For instance, I suppose that decades ago, there were hordes of atheists whose chief objection to the existence of God was the fact that science had proved that the universe was really big. Like Lewis, I am unable to see why this is a substantial objection against God's existence. Unlike Lewis, I have not written several different essays all explaining that this is wrong and that Christians (post-Ptolemy) have known that the universe is quite large. I don't doubt that Lewis knew a number of atheists who were committed to this disproof of the existence of God, but I don't think many of them are around right now, so reading about them becomes tiresome around the fourth essay about them.

To be fair to Lewis, God in the Dock is not his own compilation; the editor Walter Hooper compiled C. S. Lewis's writings from various sources. I'm sure if C. S. Lewis had been given the proofs, he probably would have cut out the redundant parts. Yet it still is surprising that as creative a writer as C. S. Lewis, in essays written over a period of twenty-four years (according to Hooper), keeps saying the same thing, and using the same anecdotes to say the same thing (even if, admittedly, he is writing for different audiences). Yes, he used the same anecdotes because they were good, and he made the same points because they were important. I get that. But it's still so tedious! In "Author's Prayer, "the poet Ilya Kaminsky writes, "I must write the same poem over and over/for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender. " That may be true. But after the tenth time of reading the same poem the reader might wave the white flag of surrender and move on to a different poet.

Noting the repeititive redundancies in Lewis has made me somewhat self-reflective. When you come right down to it, we all repeat ourselves endlessly. When I'm out in public with my wife and making small talk, even back before we were married, she heard the same anecdotes over and over again. Heck, back when I began this blog, I thought I had a nearly inexhaustible supply of weirdness coursing through my veins, but even my brain cannot provide me with enough instances of weirdness a week for regular blogging (say, three entries a week): Sometimes I must even take recourse to the rich untapped Alaskan oil wells of pseudoprofundities from the distant past.

Even when I find a unique subject to blog about, I find myself repeating similar sentence structures or using the same words (i.e. the word "cuteness"). It is odd to speculate that, perhaps at the point when most bloggers first begin their blog--before they have yet developed a fan base--such bloggers have the largest supply of new things to say, because they have been developing ideas for all of the previous portion of their life: all too soon, they will only have 2/3 days to develop a new idea. C. S. Lewis merrily wrote essays for different audiences and often said the same thing, probably never dreaming that the essays would be collected together and that close proximity would make the repetition so visible. When we blog, we also repeat ourselves, without the luxury of hiding the repetition into different places so that we seem more creative than we are. (I don't think this would have been Lewis's intention; it would, however, have been mine.) Perhaps we repeat ourselves in blogging because we cannot help dwelling on subjects that we care about and continue to care about. Perhaps we "must write the same blog entry over and over/for the empty computer screen is but the white flag of surrender."

A Ticking Time Bomb of Cuteness

(Yes, yes, I know I have written two posts in a row that have "cuteness" in the title. Consider this as "thematically resonant" rather than "Leopoldtulip cannot come up with new titles.")

My wife and I have recently been watching a show called Millennium, created by Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files. After Millennium was cancelled, Chris Carter sneakily had the Millennium characters guest-star on The X-Files to wrap up some dangling plot-lines. Our curiosity piqued, we decided to give Millennium a try. About all we remember about The X-Files wrap-up episode is that the main character is re-united with his young daughter at the end.

Now that we've started watching Millennium, I'm not really surprised the series was cancelled. It's about the most depressing thing you can watch. The main character spends each episode "getting into the mind of" a social deviant. The opening credits show various torture scenes (such as a person who has had his eyes and mouth sewn shut), along with gloomy messages running across the screen such as "worry" and "who cares?" Amidst all the darkness every episode, whether it be someone who goes to funerals in order to kill the mourners, or someone who sets fire to priests, there is one bright, shining light (no pun intended): the main character has a young daughter. With curly hair. A friendly giggle. In other words, a ticking time bomb of cuteness.

Let me explain. There is no way that a show this dark is going to let a cute little girl peacefully coexist with the thorough-going darkness and evil you see each week. Something very bad has got to happen. Yes, I know that she must survive until the end of the series, because I've seen _The X-Files_ episode. But that doesn't mean that there's not going to be "the episode." "The episode" where the cute little girl is kidnapped by an enemy and tortured, and the ticking time bomb of cuteness explodes in a dazzling array of darkness and despair: the curly haired girl will not die; it's just that her suffering will make the viewer despair of living. So each time we watch an episode, we wonder, "Is this going to be the one?" The one where all the time they have spent showing her draw pictures of cute animals, of saying "I love Daddy," of pushing the boundaries of plausible cuteness, all this will come to a head. Sometimes, the writers fake you out: the little girl's pet dies, and you think that this is going to be the episode where they will exploit your weakness and her childhood innocence will be completely crushed. But no: lo, the husband and wife tell their daughter that her parents are immortal, and suddenly, the girl can be cute again. They keep toying with me. Something's going to happen. If the daughter is not tortured, than something's going to happen to her mom. One way or another, childhood innocence cannot last past season 2, max.

I realize it may seem silly to write a blog entry with my predictions about a show that has been over for years. What I'm interested in are two things: 1st, the principle involved, what I will term "The cost of cuteness." In a typical dark drama, babies, etc. are introduced primarily so that you will develop a rapport with them and then watch them be killed. God intends evil to serve a good purpose, while dark drama types intend cuteness to further some form of despair. That's how they work. Second, I'm interested in the experience of watching a depressing show just knowing that something bad will happen in one of the episodes to a cute character. This experience I shall term "The Hauntingness of Cuteness." There is just no way of inserting so much cuteness without suggesting something nasty's going to happen, so you have to just hide your face during all the cute parts.

Behold the Rampant Cuteness

As you might know, our blog is having a pledge drive for comments this month. One of the greatest challenges in leaving a comment is thinking up something substantial to say. We don't want to say something unless it contributes meaningfully to a discussion. Our heads demand we say something of import, but then fail to provide us with anything that is so.

There is a resolution to this dilemma. Cuteness. In my personal research into what kinds of blog entries elicit commentary, I have noticed that other bloggers have hit the veritable gold mine that is visual cuddliness. If there is a picture of a cute baby that has sprung from the loins of the blogger, the blogger will receive comments like, "That is such a cute baby! You are incredible!" People whose normal self-surveillance says, "You must not leave a comment unless it is meaningful" turns off when a cute object enters the room. (I suppose this is analogous to men's brains apparently functioning less coherently around a pretty woman.) Look at our two very cute cats there: Cricket (the black one) and Pippin (the white one). Do you dare not affirm them? It's almost like Cricket is saying, "Tell me I am cute, or Pippin will be forever SUFFOCATED! It does not matter how insubstantial your comment! Tell me I am cute NOW!"

Okay, I suppose I should be honest. Those are not pictures of our cats Cricket and Pippin. I don't know how to take my own photos and put them on my blog. Even if I did, I would not have the patience to stalk my kitties and try to say encouraging things so that they would eventually perform actions that revealed their cuteness. But does it really matter that these cats aren't mine, and are from cuteoverload (posted July 11, 2006)? There are plenty of bloggers out there who reap praise for having babies that are cute, or having cats that are cute, not for having any cuteness of their own. And frankly, even the babies can claim no credit for their cuteness, as it is a gracious gift of God. Sure, I don't "own" these cats. I don't "own" other people's babies. However, I do have internet photographs of them, and according to Amish tradition, that means I own their souls. I believe that this gives me the right to post pictures of them and get accolades for their accomplishments. For those Marxists among you, help me take back the means of production, i.e. cats and babies. For those of you who admire cuteness, leave a comment now, before the cat that is not actually Cricket does something rash and violent. Praise the cuteness ... before it preys upon YOU.

Reverse Reverse Discrimination

Many conservatives complain that, because of Affirmative Action, African Americans may beat out better qualified white people for certain jobs. The argument goes on to say that even qualified African Americans suffer from Affirmative Action, because white people, apparently not equipped with the powers of logic, will thereby assume that every African American with a job must be unqualified, so they will show equal disrespect toward them all. This objection fails to consider another way in which affirmative action may have a negative effect on qualified African Americans: acting jobs.

On the last episode of the very clever television show Wonderfalls, there is a young African American shoplifter (around the age of 12). On the audio commentary, the producers revealed that they had thought the kid did an excellent job at his audition, but they didn't want to give him the part because it would just seem stereotypical and racist: "Who's the kind of guy who'd be a shoplifter? I know, someone black!" Eventually, the producers grudgingly decided that, since he really was the most talented reader, they might as well give him the part, even though he's African American.

So to all you white people out there: why not stop complaining about Affirmative Action, and use it to your advantage? There may be hundreds of talented African American actors who will be turned down for criminal acting roles that you, as an untalented white person, can still play. Even though the producers of Wonderfalls eventually capitulated to merit, there may be many producers out there who won't do so. There is a veritable fecund harvest of criminal acting jobs out there, just for you, because you are white. Just don't be upset if everybody assumes you must be a bad actor simply because of the color of your skin.

17th century study suggests link between coffee and impotence

In the olden days, alcohol was clearly evil. People even killed Jesus in parables because of it (Luke 20:14). But then, alcohol got all ambiguous and supported even by people who weren't Al Capone. Scientific studies suggested that red wine could prolong your life at the cost of your immortal soul. Before you knew it, study after study said that wine was not the devil's juice and maybe even appropriate in worship services. However, in March 2006, a bold countercultural study said that maybe, just maybe, red wine was evil and without health benefit.

Given that wine might send you to hell and/or not make you live longer, you might think that the solution is simple: coffee. Surely, if we drink coffee, no harm can befall us! We theorize that, with the putrid stench er um odoriferous aromatic emanation of coffee, happiness is ours! After all, coffee helps prevent Parkinson's Disease. Does not coffee offer us a viable alternative, a pou sto from which we stand untroubled and untossed by the winds and waves of wine that seek to drown us in their wetness?

The answer is not so simple. A wise man once said that those who do not know the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat it, and in no case is this so true as in coffee. Centuries ago, coffee was introduced in England, and the results were devastating for British home-life. A study was conducted by 17th century English housewives that suggests that coffee may offer a viable alternative to the rampant wickedness of wine only by posing a grave threat to the existence of humanity--cessation of the cultural mandate, i.e., the making of babies. The 17th century study, "The Women's Petition Against Coffee," can be found here. Here is an excerpt of the study's findings:

"There was a glorious Dispensation ('twas surely in the Golden Age) when Lusty Ladds of seven or eight hundred years old, Got Sons and Daughters; and we have read, how a Prince of Spain was forced to make a Law, that Men should not Repeat the Grand Kindness to their Wives, above NINE times in a night: But Alas! Alas! Those forwards Days are gone, The dull Lubbers want a Spur now, rather than a Bridle: being so far from doing any works of Supererregation that we find them not capable of performing those Devoirs which their Duty, and our Expectations Exact.

"The Occasion of which Insufferable Disaster, after a serious Enquiry, and Discussion of the Point by the Learned of the Faculty, we can Attribute to nothing more than the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

"For the continual sipping of this pittiful drink is enough to bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpice-point without a Charm. It renders them that use it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel'd as Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend 'twill keep them Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough after it."

Sure, this study is not "scientific" in the sense that it was conducted by fancy scientific implements that beep. It was conducted by people who knew what they knew. It was by women who sensed a change, a shudder in the value-laden fabric that is culture, and wanted to save their civilization. Without the making of babies, all civilization and coffee are in vain, and they knew that. A choice between red wine and coffee is no choice at all.